**5. References**


**Section 3** 

**Environmental/Ecological Issues** 

46 New Approaches to the Study of Marine Mammals

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**Author details** 

Edward O. Keith

**5. References** 

NY. 325 pp.

degree of recycling may be one reason for the ability of these animals to avoid ketoacidosis, a major deleterious consequence of fasting in many other mammals, and thus allow them to

*Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences, Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA* 

Castellini, M.A., D.P. Costa, and A.C. Huntley. 1987. Fatty acid metabolism in fasting northern elephant seal pups. Journal of Comparative Physiology B 157:445-449. Champagne, C.D., D.S. Houser, and D.E. Crocker. 2005. Glucose production and substrate cycle activity in a fasting adapted animal, the northern elephant seal. Journal of

Edelstein-Keshet, L. 1988. Mathematical models in biology. Random House, Inc., New York,

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Katz, J., H. Rostami, and A. Dunn. 1974. Evaluation of glucose turnover, body mass, and recycling with reversible and irreversible tracers. Biochemical Journal 142:161-170. Keith, E.O. 1984. Glucose metabolism in fasting northern elephant seal pups. Ph.D.

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undergo a prolonged fast during this vulnerable period in their life history.

**Chapter 3** 

© 2012 Marsili et al., licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2012 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,

**"Test Tube Cetaceans": From the Evaluation of** 

**Susceptibility to the Study of Genotoxic Effects** 

**of Different Environmental Contaminants Using** 

Letizia Marsili, Silvia Maltese, Daniele Coppola, Ilaria Caliani, Laura Carletti,

Cetacean diversity, like all biodiversity worldwide, is seriously threatened; its loss seems to be occurring at a very rapid and increasing rate [1]. In March 2010, the European Commission set a key objective for 2020: halt the loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystem services in the EU [2]. To the objective of improving the effectiveness of conservation strategies it becomes important to know the health status of endangered species and then to develop methods of investigation that are not destructive and the least invasive possible. In the last few years a non destructive sampling method, the skin biopsy, was developed in cetaceans to obtain viable tissue samples from free-ranging animals [3]. With the skin biopsy it is possible to assess the effects of multiple pressures related to bioaccumulation of anthropogenic contaminants, infectious diseases, climate change, food depletion from over-fishing, bycatch, noise, shipping and collision that stress cetacean species. The evaluation of their "health status" is possible using a suite of sensitive tools, such as non-destructive biomarkers, that will enable us to detect the presence and the effects of contaminants, the reproduction alteration, the genotoxicity, the immunosuppression, the feeding ecology and the general stress [4]. Actually, it is very difficult to discern the effects of one threat from those of another when multiple threats are acting simultaneously; for example the incidence of pathology in cetaceans is closely related to the level of pollution in their environments and thus bacterial and viral infections and contaminants should be considered from a holistic point of view [5]. Regarding the effects of anthropogenic

Matteo Giannetti, Tommaso Campani, Matteo Baini, Cristina Panti,

**Cetacean Fibroblast Cell Cultures** 

Silvia Casini and M. Cristina Fossi

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/54429

**1. Introduction** 

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter
